… 274 pages of emails released under pressure on Wednesday by Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan show a cynical and callous indifference to the plight of the mostly black, poverty-stricken residents of Flint, who have gone for more than a year with poisoned tap water that is unsafe to drink or bathe in. …

On October 23, 2015, a gigantic, man-made volcano of methane began spewing from a Southern California Gas Company underground natural gas storage facility in Porter Ranch, California, home to 30,000. The leak has been sickening them ever since. Thousands of families have been forced to relocate (although many more are seeking relocation) entire schools have been closed, well- established businesses are shuttering, and the FAA even created a no-fly zone over the area due to fears the leak could be ignited from the air- and there is not clear end in sight. As to its cause, “experts are pointing to an old and leaky safety valve,” which “Sempra (SoCalGas’ parent company)— whose annual revenues exceed $12 billion — opted not to replace the valve because it was not deemed a ‘critical well.’”

“SoCalGas’ response to this disaster is almost as alarming as the impact on the community.” The company’s plans for stopping the leak have failed more than half a dozen times and a new strategy for plugging up the well is likely to take months.

In recent days, there have been a number of articles and blogs comparing these two catastrophes. (See here, here.) The New York Timeswrote this week:

Health officials have tested the [Porter Ranch] air and deemed it safe. Yes, the awful smell from a huge natural gas leak near the Porter Ranch neighborhood may cause vomiting, nosebleeds and other short-term symptoms, they say, but they have assured residents that it does not pose long-term health risks.

Many people here, however, simply do not buy it. And now they look warily toward Flint, Mich., where the switch to a new water supply, which state officials insisted for months was safe, has left children with high levels of lead in their blood.

With Flint as a potent warning, confidence in public agencies has collapsed here after the gas leak. Unconvinced by health department reassurances, residents have turned for guidance to lawyers who are spearheading lawsuits.

But that’s where the legal comparisons may end.

In California, writes theLos Angeles Times, Erin Brockovich and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are among those involved with at least 25 lawsuits that have been filed so far on behalf of residents and businesses harmed by the gas leak. They have been filed against “Southern California Gas Co and its parent company Sempra Energy, the non-government operators of the leaking gas storage facility.” And they are suing for “negligence, hazardous activity, nuisance and trespass and seek compensation for emotional and physical injuries, as well as for diminished property values.”

But the challenges of filing lawsuits on behalf of Flint, Michigan residents are, sadly, more complicated. Some lawsuits have been filed. But as Reuters explains,

What's holding [other attorneys] back, several lawyers said, is not the facts or the victims, but the prospective targets: The State of Michigan, the city of Flint, and officials at various levels of government. Special legal protections make it difficult to hold governments liable for damages, they said.

Federal and state governments and employees engaged in their official duties are shielded from most private lawsuits by a legal doctrine known as sovereign immunity. The doctrine, enshrined in the laws of many countries, stems from the centuries-old principle that the government itself cannot commit a legal wrong, though exceptions have evolved.

While cities in the U.S. are not technically considered to have sovereign status, they are similarly protected by state and federal laws.…

Sovereign immunity … may not apply if the plaintiff can show there was gross negligence. Michigan law, however, shields the state's topmost officials - including the governor, agency heads and Flint's emergency manager - even in cases of gross negligence.

As to the few lawsuits that have been filed so far, the attorneys “are pushing relatively novel theories designed to circumvent immunity. The financially troubled city was governed by a state-appointed emergency manager at the time of the change to the river water.” Reuters notes:

One of the Flint lawsuits, filed in November against the state and local governments and various officials in U.S. district court in Ann Arbor, makes a federal constitutional argument. It contends that the decision to switch the water source denied residents their civil rights to bodily integrity and to be free from state-created danger. The state's response is due next month.

We hope other firms step in to help. As “Robin Greenwald of New York plaintiffs’ firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which is also representing plaintiffs in California,” put it, “’I really believe there must be something to do here … There must be an opportunity for that community to be compensated. They poisoned kids.’”

December 17, 2013

I have a thought. Let’s round up all the folks from the Americans Tort Reform Association – the corporate folks who produce that (both) sad and hilariousJudicial Hellhole report each year - and make them all spend a year together somewhere. There’d be only one requirement for this new hot spot: all those civil justice cases that ATRA abhors so much would be banned. Illegal. Verboten! Let’s call this new place, I dunno, ATRA Paradise!

Lead paint. Unlike other cities, ATRA Paradise won’t get any clean-up help from the paint companies who “knew as early as 1912 that lead paint caused brain damage in babies and children, yet … marketed this paint specifically for use in nurseries, and directed advertisements at babies and children.”

Unsafe drug vials that lead to events like Hep C outbreaks. Also, drugs that mislead consumers due to their manufacturers’ unfair and deceptive acts. Outside of ATRA Paradise, lawsuits by states against deceptive drug companies result in millions of dollars to state governments. Guess they’ll just have to raise taxes instead!

Hospitals with rampant medical errors - the third leading cause of death in the U.S. We all have to live with that problem but at ATRA Paradise, their catastrophically-injured child will just have make do on Medicaid!

September 16, 2011

I don’t think it is a stretch to say that paint companies intentionally poisoned children. They knew as early as 1912 that lead paint caused brain damage in babies and children, yet through the Mad Men years, they marketed this paint specifically for use in nurseries, and directed advertisements at babies and children. As we’ve noted before, most of these companies still exist in some form and continue to profit from their past misdeeds.

Sally, Bobby and baby Gene Draper may not epitomize the demographic of kids who ate a lot of lead-based paint chips back in the day, although it’s doubtful their parents would have cared much given their support for playthings like plastic dry-cleaning bags (as long as the dry clearing was safe!). But also, in the 1950s and 1960s, many families had no idea that lead paint did this to children - thanks to a massive paint industry cover-up.

In fact, it took another decade for the U.S. to finally ban lead paint for residential use in 1978. After that, no child should have been knowingly exposed to it – especially by a medical facility of all things. We expect that to be mostly true, except if you were a poor child in Baltimore, apparently.

As reported today in the New York Times, a class action was filed yesterday against the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore,

[A]ccusing it of knowingly exposing black children as young as a year old to lead poisoning in the 1990s as part of a study exploring the hazards of lead paint. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that more than 100 children [ages 12 months to 5 years] were endangered by high levels of lead dust in their homes despite assurances from the Kennedy Krieger Institute that the houses were “lead safe.”

“Children were enticed into living in lead-tainted housing and subjected to a research program which intentionally exposed them to lead poisoning in order for the extent of the contamination of these children’s blood to be used by scientific researchers to assess the success of lead paint or lead dust abatement measures,” said the suit, filed in state court in Baltimore. “Nothing about the research was designed to treat the subject children for lead poisoning.”

Kennedy Krieger Institute, by the way, says that the research, started in 1993 and lasting 6 years, “was conducted in the best interest of all of the children enrolled.”

The suit says, “The hospital used these children as known guinea pigs in these contaminated houses to complete this study … For this study, KKI selected children and their parents who were predominantly from a lower economic strata and minorities." Moreover, this isn't the first lawsuit connected to this shameful research experiment.

Earlier lawsuits were heard by the Court of Appeals, which ruled that the legal actions could go forward. In its 2001 decision, the court found the researchers failed to warn families that their children faced a health risk if they continued to live in the homes. The court also found that the researchers did not inform the families of the youngsters' elevated blood-lead levels in a timely manner. Some of the cases were settled confidentially.

Unfortunately, the paint industry’s sordid past isn’t grounds for justice for every family. In Mississippi last week, the Supreme Court overturned a $7 million jury verdict “against the Sherwin-Williams Co., which had argued it was not liable for the illnesses of a boy who might have eaten lead-contaminated paint chips.”

August 02, 2011

In 1994, a powerful new corporate crime fighter appeared on the scene and his name was Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken. Crackers actually did most of his work on television – two different TV shows, to be exact: TV Nation (a 2-year summer replacement series that won a 1995 Emmy for Outstanding Informational Series) and later, The Awful Truth, which aired in the spring/summer of 1999 and 2000. Sadly, both series eventually ended and without a TV show to feature his adventures in corporate crime-fighting, Crackers slowly disappeared from the scene. But as we just learned, his work has lived on!

In 1994, while on TV Nation, Crackers visited the Doe Run lead smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri, near St. Louis. This smelter was poisoning kids with lead, which causes brain damage, so Crackers had a bunch of them tested, spoke to company officials, took his findings over to state regulatory officials, and basically exposed the entire mess to a much wider public. You can read more about it here and in the wonderful book, Adventures in a TV Nation. The segment was nomintated in 1996 for an Environmental Media Association award (although sadly for Crackers, the show lost out to one about endangered species - not that there's anything wrong with that.)

But now, all these many years later, the kids in Herculaneum are going to finally get justice thanks to a persistent community, some great lawyers and a jury that seems about as angry about what was done here as Crackers was! As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The mystery Friday afternoon was not whether the jury would punish the Herculaneum lead smelter's former owners for negligently exposing 16 children to harmful lead pollution.

The jury had already said it planned to award punitive damages, on top of a $38.5 million verdict as compensation for health problems and lost lifetime earnings.

The only question still lingering in the St. Louis Circuit courtroom at the end of a three-month trial was the size of that award.

The answer: $320 million.

The amount surprised even the plaintiffs' attorneys. They had suggested to the jury a punitive award that was one-third lower.

"I'm stunned," said Gerson Smoger, a Dallas attorney who worked on the case with St. Louis attorney Mark Bronson.

"They obviously wanted to send a message: Don't choose profits over people," Bronson said. "That's what this case is about."…

This case was just one of many targeting the massive lead smelter in Herculaneum, about 30 miles south of St. Louis. The lawsuits claim former and current owners knowingly exposed residents to lead pollution, a neurotoxin that is especially harmful to children. Plaintiffs' attorneys said their clients, children growing up near the smelter, suffered lost IQ points and other health effects from lead poisoning that the company knew existed and only reluctantly revealed.

This case is the first to reach trial.

No doubt, this jury verdict is bound to brighten Crackers' view of retirement, especially in light of what might happen to his Medicare benefits.

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